Sending orders to a supplier

An order a customer places on your shop does not go to your supplier. It waits on Supplier orders until you send it.

Buying blanks from a wholesaler rather than sending work to a printer? Orders go over as one delivery instead of one at a time: send a day’s orders as one delivery.

That is deliberate. A printed order cannot be undone once it is in a press, and the specification came from a shopper rather than from you. The screen exists so there is a moment between the two.

Test mode comes first

A new connection starts in test mode, and the screen says so at the top. Nothing is made and nothing is charged. Turn real orders on from the supplier’s connect screen when you are ready.

Once real orders are on, the banner changes to say so. The difference between the two states is the difference between a rehearsal and money.

Until real orders are on, Send sends nothing. The order stays on the list, and its row says why: This shop is not set to send real orders yet, so nothing was sent. Turn on “Send real orders” in the supplier settings when you are ready.

What is waiting, and why

Orders are grouped by what they need from you.

Ready for you to look at. Nothing is stopping these. Read one and send it.

Waiting on a proof. Your customer has not signed the artwork off yet. You send them a digital proof your own way, in your own words. When they approve it, record that here. The order joins the ready group, with who confirmed it and when written on the order. Proofs are on by default and can be switched off on the supplier’s connect screen.

Need fixing before they can go. Something in the order will not do, and the screen lists what. These cannot be sent until the list is empty.

Sent, and in the printer’s hands. Done with, kept so you can find them again. An order is marked Sent only when the supplier took it.

Under an order’s badge, a line says what happened last, if anything did: The last attempt did not go through: and the reason. An order with nothing to add shows no line.

If nothing at all is ready, the screen says so rather than showing an empty list. An empty list and a list of things that each want something are not the same situation.

What it tells you before you send

What the order will cost you, and what you make on it. The supplier’s charge against what the customer paid, before VAT. If the two have drifted so far that an order would lose you money, the screen says you lose. It does not show a negative and leave you to notice.

Sometimes the cost is not known yet, and it says that instead of guessing.

Where it is going, including when a customer is collecting rather than having it delivered, since that changes what it costs you.

Whether the artwork is attached. A supplier will usually accept an order with files still to come, and hold it until they arrive. A missing file is still worth knowing about before you send rather than after.

Any note the customer left for the courier, passed on as they wrote it.

After you press a button

Every button on the screen brings you back to the same supplier’s tab, at the row of the order you pressed. You never land on another supplier’s orders.

If a send stops before anything leaves, the row says why in plain words. A proof still waiting reads The last attempt did not go through: the customer has not approved a proof yet, so nothing was sent. Mark the proof approved, then send.

The artwork on an order

Each file on an order’s row says whose it is, Customer’s file or Your proof, and when it came. The file that goes with the send is marked Goes to Tradeprint, so a proof you uploaded and the customer’s own file can never be mixed up.

Remove takes a file off the order before it is sent, after asking. The file itself is kept, and the order’s notes record who took it off. A line always keeps one file, so its last file has no Remove: use Use a different file to replace it. Removing the customer’s file offers Put the customer’s file back, which restores it once and leaves your proof where it is. Once an order is sent, its files are fixed.

Every file downloads on its own, and Download all gives you a zip with a Customer files folder and a Your proof folder. That works on every supplier’s tab, not only a printer’s.

Sending several at once

On the Tradeprint tab, tick the orders you want and press the button in the bar at the bottom, which names them: Send 2 orders to Tradeprint. Each one still goes as its own order, one after another, through the same checks as the Send button on its row. With real orders on, it asks first, naming how many orders and what they cost in total. If one gets no reply, the rest are not sent, and the screen says to check with the supplier before sending them.

Orders you placed yourself

If you placed an order with the supplier directly, on the phone or on their website, mark it Already ordered so it is not sent twice. Add their order number if you have it, then press Mark as ordered. It leaves the waiting list marked Ordered by you, and the order’s notes record who marked it and the number. Tick several and use Already ordered in the bar to mark them together.

The Supplier orders menu item counts the orders still waiting, from any page in your admin.

Finding one

Search by order number, customer name or product. A shop doing a few orders a day does not need it. A shop doing a few hundred cannot work without it, which is why it is there.

When the supplier says no

Before an order is created, the supplier is asked whether they would accept it. That catches a bad order without making one, which is the whole point of asking first.

If the supplier refuses an order, whether it is a wrong password or a job they turned down, the order goes back on the list with their reason on its row. Fix it and send again. Only an order that went out without a clear answer stays on Being sent, because it may already be with the printer.

If something still goes wrong afterwards, the screen names it plainly:

They cannot print this. The specification will not do. Read what they said, fix it, and put the order back on the list.

They could not take payment. Nothing was made. Sort the payment side out with them and ask them to try again from here.

The artwork did not arrive. Send it again. If you have checked with them and it genuinely never landed, say so here. The order goes back to waiting rather than sitting as sent.

Being sent. It is in flight. Give it a minute rather than pressing again, so one order does not become two.

Anything you have opened can be put back on the list if you would rather deal with it later.

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Next: health, history and alerts covers being told when a supplier goes quiet, and sell printed products covers the settings that decide what a shopper is quoted in the first place.